Tuesday, July 01, 2003

Drastically Underfunded, Dangerously UnpreparedThe Council on Foreign Relations published a report saying that the U.S. is woefully unprepared to deal with another major terrorist attack. While spending $70 billion or so to demolish Iraq, and hundreds of billions on tax cuts for the rich, the Bushies and the Republitron congress refuse to spend the $100 billion or so deemed necessary by the report to provide adequate preparation.

The report was made by a committee chaired by former Republican Senator Warren Rudman:

"I believe in the next five years — can’t tell you when, where, what or how — there will be an attack," Rudman told Tim Russet Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press."And, God forbid, it’s an attack with either chemical or biological or worse, some sort of nuclear device. We are not prepared to deal with that."

See Back In Iraq 2.0 for more on this; you can also read the whole report if you've got the time. (Full disclosure--I don't.)

My personal feeling is that 9/11, as terrible as it was, was overhyped, and that terrorism still poses a tiny threat to America. As I've pointed out several times on this blog, more Americans are killed every month in car accidents than have been killed in all terrorist attacks in the past ten years. (A nice several-dollar hike in the gas tax would cut way down on both numbers, as well as those killed by air pollution.) But if you disagree and believe that we must address the threat of terrorism, this latest report clearly shows that, despite all his rhetoric and wars, George W. Bush is not doing that at all.